A Winter's Tale
by Archea
Summary: First Christmas after the War. Once again, Sirius and Severus meet in the vicinity of the Whomping Willow. Slash SB/SS.


**Disclaimer** : J. K. Rowling owns them all. I made a bid for Sirius, but Severus wanted to come too and I can't afford a package deal.

**Betaed by** : sweet patient long-suffering Asa (Aspiring Author). The story is for you, who battled so bravely against narrative ellipsis and French 'doohickey' quotation marks.

**A Winter's Tale**

_I called my love a false love, but what said he then?_

_Sing willow, willow, willow. _

Shakespeare, _Othello_.

_First days of peace -_ Sirius thought, leaning his elbows on the window sill and gazing out at Hogwarts' lanes under a cloud-coloured sky - _feel like post-coital sadness._ He was careful to keep this opinion to himself, but there it was, mocking him under the pale thin sun. And Christmas Eve was proving no exception.

It was not so much the boredom. He had had his lion's share of that during the war: his role, after all, had been essentially to lie low and let others fight the good fight. No, it was the sober fact that everything that had once connected him, the recluse, to these others was either going or gone. Gone, the long-cherished glimpses of Harry or Remus slipping into Grimmauld Place to give him a hug and a catch-up on the latest war bulletin. Gone, the Order meetings that could lengthen out until dawn or break after a few words because word had come that the foe was at close quarters. Gone, the sound and fury of the last months when he had left his ancestral home at last to watch Harry bleed and shout and end it all for them.

Yes, end it all. War had brought division. Peace spelt separation.

When McGonagall had toasted 'absent friends' at yesterday's lunch, with so few of them in attendance, he had let out a quiet snort and felt Snape's eyes flick to his for a second. He knew that Minerva had meant the dead, but the dead were never truly absent. The dead etched their loss into your heart and never let you rest in peace. It was the living who deserted you in the end, blamelessly of course — all is fair in love and war. He'd seen the Lupins off to their honeymoon in Carpathia. Harry was spending Christmas at the Burrow, which had provided him with a bunch of first-class ersatz siblings and, more recently, a young red-haired fiancée. Sirius had been invited to lunch with them on Boxing Day. So he'd left for Hogsmeade at the first knock of light, bought a canary-shaped snitch (complete with a warbling charm) that would have made the boy a splendid gift six years ago, and come back to his view on the lanes.

With a jolt, he realized that someone was walking down the white-glazed path, a tall, dark figure with narrow shoulders and a slight stoop. Snape, it seemed, had opted for a walk within the pale. Funny how their fates once again aped each other. Suspected criminals, victimized fools, two-faced warriors, occasional spies and now both on parole until their names were cleared. Well, he was beginning to resent his confinement too. Snatching his coat and gloves, Sirius strode out of the room briskly.

He spotted Snape's footsteps in the main lane and began to follow them absently, keeping his eyes to the ground. There had been a fresh fall of snow in the night and he caught himself hoping that Harry and Ginny still felt young enough to roll in it today. _Rolling together on the family sofa, more likely, _he thought sourly, then cuffed himself mentally. _Speak of following in Snape's footsteps. I'll be arching an eyebrow next_. The neat, regular footprints led him round one of the greenhouses, back upon the main path, and down to a stone bench where they ceased to be. Looking up, Sirius saw that the bench faced the lake. Snape was sitting there, his back very straight, his eyes focused on the Whomping Willow a few feet away.

_Typical. Christmas and Armistice Day rolled into one, and the man celebrates by ruminating a twenty-year old prank. So much for a cease-fire._

He was about to retrace his steps when Snape turned his head and gave him a quiet nod. Sirius hesitated, then sat next to him. The Willow, as usual, was whomping away the time, lurching right and left against the sky like a novice tai chi practitioneer.

"An interesting tree by all accounts." Snape's voice was quiet as it rose in the cold Caledonian air, a wisp of mist in its wake. "Deemed by the Greeks to summon serpents at will, associated with rebirth and renewal by the Celts. A healer, a pain-killer, an emblem of grief and death, a companion to the moon, a patron for sufferers in love. And the first sight of Hogwarts that was granted us as we were borne across that lake."

Sirius nodded. This was a memory that could be shared safely.

"I have never forgotten it, you see. I can still feel the thrill and the fear, because everything looked so outsized. I was longing… longing for a place called home that had no known existence , and uncertain whether I'd find it here. There was no one I knew in my boat and the castle looked so unfamiliar. I was highly excited and deeply scared. I felt like a dwarf in Giantland, which was only enhanced by the fact that I was sitting close to Hagrid. You would have been in one of the next boats."

"The last one. James forgot his cloak on the train and we had to run and catch up with you."

"Yes. Well, I myself was in the admiral boat where Hagrid, in the foolishness of his heart, began to tell us a tale. That was when the Willow loomed up against the night sky, all thrashing creepers, and had us nearly capsize the boat. 'Nah,' said Hagrid, 'Don' be afraid. Willie there's a good boy, a fine strappin' tree. He's a first-year too, see. Jus' been set here to protect yeh, and a good protector he'll be, 'cause his bite is worth his bark.'"

"Sounds quite witty for Hagrid. All he ever told me on my first day was, 'The reason the Forest is forbidden ter yeh, lad, is 'cause it's the Forbidden Forest.' "

"Could it be that he kept his wit for subtler minds? Anyway, Hagrid told us that we were to respect Willie and keep away from him for our own good but that once a year, the week before Christmas, we could ask him for something and he would grant our wish."

"How touching. But then, a subtle mind like yours would hardly have bothered with such a piece of superstition."

"Well, I - I did, in fact." (Snape coughed.) "Bother. Eleven year old, given a brand new life to chew, eager and terrified – what would you expect? That first week before Christmas, while everyone went rattling on about the grand time and the grand gifts expecting them at home, I loitered a bit after Herbology and wished for a box of chocolate frogs."

The words rang so incongruous in that even, thoughtful, almost magisterial voice that Sirius had to laugh. He did not know which thought was funnier — young Snivellus craving for a chocolate frog, or old Snape gravely sharing his childhood memory with his acknowledged nemesis. To his surprise, Snape's laugh echoed his own — a sharp, gravelly, dark-chocolatey chuckle. Sirius thought of Remus and felt a pinch in the region of his heart. "Did you get them?" he asked hastily.

"Oh yes. Perhaps I should explain that the request had a symbolic edge. You see, Christmas at home was... at best a dull business. But when business was over, my mother came to see me in my room and slipped a box of chocolate frogs under my quilt. We ate them in the dark, she and I, and it was the one day in the year when she did not tell me to brush my teeth. So what I really wished for, I think, was that my departure to Hogwarts would leave this ritual unchanged. It did. And left me eager to ask for more, come next Christmas."

"Two boxes of chocolate frogs?" Sirius found that his voice held no irony.

"You underestimate me. I was a fast-growing, soon-greedy boy of twelve whose stomach never called it quits, even on Hogwarts's generous fare. I asked for a _real _Christmas dinner, a regular feast. Then my mother wrote to say that I had better stay at Hogwarts that year — dull business was turning into very bad business indeed — and I thought the Willow a benefactor, though a bit stingy. I mean, turkey and butterpeas are honorable as Christmas meals go, but they hardly qualify for a banquet. And then..."

Sirius tried to anticipate the tale but his memory drew a blank. As far as he remembered, his second-year Christmas had been the same bleak pantomime as its predecessors. He felt almost envious for the child who had been allowed to stay at school.

"Then Dumbledore had the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang Heads come as guests of honor. Remember how everyone began to speak of restoring the Triwizard Games that year? Madame Maxime accepted the invitation and brought her personal chef with her. He took the kitchens by storm, galvanized the house elves into action and gave us the best Christmas dinner I've ever had. I'd always thought _vol-au-vent_ was the French equivalent for a kite and, Salazar, was I glad to learn the error of my ways. I was sick for the following three days, and I nearly bowed to Willie when I saw him again.

And so, inevitably, I grew bolder in my wishes."

"Meaning…?"

"Well. In my third year, I asked him for a pet. I'd never been allowed one at home and I was coming to realize that human company — at least in its less evolved form — did not agree with me. The Willow, once again, acknowledged my wish in that rather bent way of his. You see, that was the year I finally managed to become an unregistered Animagus..."

"Oh please. Suspension of disbelief is all very well, but that's sheer fucking plagiarism."

"Not at all. If that dolt Pettigrew was able to do it, why not clever, freakish, beastly Severus Snape?"

"Sorry, mate. Me no see, me no believe."

"Very well, Saint Thomas. Watch this."

Snape raised a finger and vanished into thin air. Black blinked a little, then leant forward until he was almost doubling up. The next moment, he was holding his nose and muttering a few profanities : Snape had bumped into it on his way back to human stature.

"Bloody hell!"

"No need for _you_ to get prickly, Black. Picture me, then, waddling into the Forest on spare hours, making friends with the other hedgehogs, gorging myself on worms and flies, and generally devising plans to prevent Hagrid from locking me in his hut and raising me as his son.

The year grew. I grew. My wishes grew on me. In my fourth year, I asked for a kiss."

"All in season. From...?"

Snape shifted on the bench and glanced at him as if to ascertain his capacity to suspend disbelief once more. "Lily Evans, if you must know."

_Ye gods_. "Plagiarism" fluttered back on Sirius's lips for a second or two but he managed to repress it, asking instead in a voice that was neutral enough, "How did the Willow pull that one?"

"In a truly Slytherin way. You may remember that the Yule Ball was a masquerade that year. The board of teachers awarded prizes for the more convincing costumes —McGonagall gave me a red-and-gold, roaring alarm clock that nearly got me thrown out of my dorm — but there were more... private rewards circulating that night."

"Good for... hey, wait a minute!" Sirius's mouth dropped open. "_You _were the Phantom of the Opera?"

"Indeed. It seems that even then, I had a fondness for prancing about in a mask and cloak."

"Snape..."

Snape waved his tone away. "I'd better speed the tale or we shall both freeze to death. Well, fifth year will be something of an anticlimax because I skipped my wish. Then again, fifth year was quite a year. Home blowing up, hormones kicking in. The Dark Lord launching a campaign to recruit his own Dream Team. You and your pack never letting up. Oh, I was your average little teen-aged bastard then — waking up every morning to the sore crow of his cock, seeking conspicuous invisibility, wooing his peers with snarls and shrugs, sneering, seething, grieving, wanking, wanting... I was a walking bundle of nerves and doubts, and I dare say it took me a whole year to sort out my priorities. But when December came into view again, I knew what I wanted, and I felt entitled to double my stake on it. I wished and begged and prayed with the directness of a curse."

"What for? What did you ask?" Sirius could not tear his gaze from Snape's face. The teller had become as intriguing as the tale — his skin flushed with the release of speech, his lips no longer pinched, his eyes burning as if they'd caught the elusive winter sun in their dark mirrors and would not ransom it.

_He should really get excited more often. _

"What for, indeed? Something that couldn't be mine, obviously, though I wanted him so badly. God, how I wanted him. Often then I thought of him as the only breastplate, the one and only shield between me and those dark days in the making... No! You fool, I know you're thinking of Albus! What did I care about old men at sixteen? Of course I cared about the boy next dorm! The young Pagan god, whose sweat smelt like summer after Quidditch! Of course I longed for the boy with the silver eyes and the quicksilver moves, the boy who tore into the sky as if the sky owed him! Oh god, the things I could tell you about that boy. Let me see - that he ate his toasts with jam and no butter in the mornings. That in Potions class he ground and stirred with his left hand, but sliced and chopped with his right, with equal grace. That on Friday, April 14 1978, during the Quidditch finals, he hexed the entire Hufflepuff team into Ravenclaw uniforms and vice versa, causing a fairly decent game to crumble into unspeakable chaos.

I was _obsessed_ with the boy. I worshipped him because he'd had the guts to renounce his home, yes, yes, and I wanted him to take me and fuck me till I let go of mine. And so for some time I settled for the next best thing: I made him as obsessed with me as I with him, the clever lad who knew how to turn persecution into one of the Fine Arts. And it went on and on for the better part of a year, the haunting and the taunting, the pushing and the giving, and then - and then it was no good. Because I knew that whatever provocation I gave, he would only touch me with his wand hand. And I wanted more.

The day was the first Monday before Christmas. It had been snowing all morning, and it was snowing again when I reached the Willow after class. I stood there in a white twilight, and I wished that Sirius Black would stop hating me."

SB-SS-SB-SS

"Shall I take it from here?" There was a crack in the speaker's voice after the long silence, but he did not wait for an answer. "Some days later, no, perhaps the next morning, Sirius Black walked up to you as you were leaving the library. He smiled, and then he said, look here, he was sorry for what he'd done to you. Said he had something else to tell you, but it was a something that no one else must hear. So why not meet him tonight in the secret room under the Whomping Willow ? Oh yes, there was a room all right, and a passage, and he'd tell you — you only — how to get there without damage. He did, then he smiled again and brushed your shoulder with his hand, and ran on to where his pals were waiting for him."

The landscape was one motionless picture. Even the Whomping Willow stood at attention, his limbs stuck in the air, as if all life was to be held as long as the voice went on.

"I could feed you the lie I've told everyone since — Albus, James, Remus, Peter, Harry, myself. How it was all a harmless joke. How I never thought there might be danger in it, frankly. That I was a silly little prat with no more sense of responsibility than a kneazle cub. I was not. I was a shitty little prick with a death wish on the run. But listen to me — it is true, in a way, that I did not want you dead. It was not you I wanted to kill, it was... it was Slytherin, other, dark, potent, proud. It was the Black half of me. I knew, even then, that I was no good — that no matter what rebellious persona I flaunted in public, I still found my secret, dripping pleasure in the mean words and the cruel gestures. And it scared me. It scared the hell out of me. So I seized my heritage and projected it onto you, and made a holocaust of it in my own puerile way.

And it did not end anything, of course. It began everything else, I think. It bred my mistrust of Remus and my sympathy for Peter, it bred James and Lily's deaths and all the folly and carnage that followed. And yes, I dare say it bred your story, too, with its own bloody follow-up. I can't tell you how sorry I am, Severus, and what a mistake it has been to hide that sorrow from you. I lost us all our youth that day, and I still don't know how to begin to pay for it."

He was staring so hard at the lake that he almost missed the light touch of Snape's hand on his shoulder.

"I can't say I'm a forgiving man, Black. I don't know what 'forgiveness' is to begin with. Some sort of gift for someone, if we may trust etymology. Well, I've just given you a tale. My tale. Perhaps that's something to — to begin with."

He could have acquiesced and left it at that. But he was a Black, and Blacks roused sleeping dogs with a kick at the first opportunity. So he took in a deep cold breath and turned his face until his eyes met with the burning black pools.

"If you could still believe the tale... if you... could trust the tree again... what would you ask for?"

"Nothing."

Something tightened in Sirius's chest, half-way between heart and lungs. _That's it, then. Up with you, and leave him in peace._

"I wouldn't _ask_, Black. I would tell the Willow what I've learnt the hard way since — that anything yet alive and kicking after the horror we've been through deserves a second chance, no matter what they've done." He cast a sardonic glance at the Whomping Willow. "Even a tree."

SB-SS-SB-SS

His eyes were no longer silver, they were grey. He had not straddled a broom for twenty years. It did not much matter which was his wand hand now.

But he was a Black, and Blacks never gave up on the past if it could justify their present acts.

Sirius cupped the teller's face in his hands and leant forward cautiously, holding his breath. The moment his lips touched flesh, he closed his eyes. Severus's lips were cool and still; it took Severus's scent to hold him there. The man smelt of wood smoke and cinnamon under his thick black coat, and it was that scent which made Sirius sigh and hold his ground until he felt the lips begin to stir beneath his, warmed by his breath. He pulled back a little and blew softly on the other man's face, keeping his eyes closed. His lips began a blind journey, ghosting against a brow, a cheek, the curve of a jaw. He inhaled the warm winter scent. This was not young Sirius acknowledging the devotion of a lost era. This was the present: rougher, stronger, with a hint of stubble. He found it oddly comforting.

And then Severus's lips were back, limber and warm, and he could have sworn they were smiling. They pushed ; no longer pliant, they kneaded, shaped, claimed the kiss for their own. Severus's tongue touched the seam between Sirius's lips. They parted, and the tongue breached his mouth, filling a void in him he had never known existed. Tongue met with tongue in that warm crypt where they could build an exchange that speech had always denied them, and Sirius's blood pooled simultaneously into his heart and his groin.

He opened his eyes to the sight of snow, water and a tree flailing away under a sky that had suddenly turned Easter blue. Gathering Severus closer to him, he addressed the tree silently. _You may be alive and kicking yet, you green-blooded Boggart, but damn you, we're two of a kind._

Then Severus sighed almost imperceptibly and pulled out of the kiss. He left his hands on Sirius' shoulders but did not look at him as he spoke again. "Well..." His voice was oddly out of tune. So hesitant; it would have gladdened Longbottom's heart, had the boy been alive to hear it. "... what do we do now?"

Oh.

Of course.

In Severus's mind, the tale was over. The hatred had been laid to rest, never to rise again; the kiss duly given and received; all the prince had to do was to give the frog a pat on the head and walk away. Sirius looked into the frog's beautiful dark eyes and saw twenty-three years of distrust plot a tentative comeback. He rose quickly, holding out his hand.

"Do? Let me tell you what we'll do, Severus. We'll walk straight back into the kitchens and pester the elves into giving us a proper Christmas lunch. Can't promise you _vol-au-vent_ but we'll make sure it's not pudding and butterpeas either. Then I'm going to take you to my rooms and give you another snog, a glorious cuddle and a fuck to end all fucks. You name the order. And then, when it's not quite night yet and the sky turns that lovely winter glow, we're going to come back here and have a snow battle. Which I'll win."

"I beg to differ." Severus was standing up in his turn. "You forget that I've spent twenty-three winters here watching the little beasts strategise around their pellets. I'll win that battle, Black, I guarantee you that. As to your other suggestions — I'm with you."

"Be with me," Sirius said quietly.

He slipped an arm round Severus's shoulders, pulling the other close, and together they began to retrace their steps toward the castle.

FINIS

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